Essays + Narratives

Still Loved Rachel Schuehle I was at work when he called me.  My dad doesn’t call me often–usually just for birthdays or health updates–so I knew I should answer. I walked to one of the smaller private meeting rooms on the floor and shut the door. He entertained a few pleasantries before getting right to […]

Before I had strange secrets.  Before I was splintered in violence.  Before my memories were lined with shattered glass.  Before my mouth tasted sour every time I heard my name, I was a girl who wanted nothing more than to be a pediatric neurosurgeon, despite having very clumsy hands. Who loved spinning around in the […]

Staring at my three-year-old’s profile, I see traces of us both.  The baby is his spitting image, but our oldest seems to be the perfect blend; she has her father’s cheek structure, my red hair.  She borrows colloquialisms from both our vocabularies and is adjusting to calling her homes by the names she’s chosen.  Two […]

I am just a mother, holding this household together,  unpaid. I am tucker-in of children with monogrammed blankets,  snug as a bug, stuffed unicorns with matted fur,  chicka chicka boom boom, and all of that rhyming jazz. I am reading the same book aloud night after night.  Tuck, read, hug, kiss, lights out. I suggest […]

“What are you going to do all day while I’m gone?” my six-year-old asks as we shuffle out the door. I grind my teeth together and remind myself he doesn’t have any memories of me commuting to the office pre-pandemic. The question is innocent, but I struggle to keep my composure. “Well, I do have […]

Ten years ago, I sat in an amphitheater-style lecture hall. It was day one of a three-day law school orientation. I felt awkward in my borrowed suit—skirt and blazer, black with white trim—and the North Carolina humidity hadn’t been kind to my hair (my school ID photo made sure no one would ever forget). I […]